Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) was an early Christian apologist, saint, and martyr. He suffered martyrdom at the hands of Roman emperor Lucius Verus in 165.

Biography
Justin was born in Flavia Neapolis, Iudaea, Roman Empire in 100 AD to a pagan gentile family. He experimented with various schools of Greek philosophy (briefly becoming a student of Plato), but he found that the words of the Christian prophets were stronger than the philosophical theories of the Greeks, and he converted. During the reign of Antoninus Pius, he settled in Rome and opened his own school, becoming an early Christian intellectual and apolgoist. Justin passionately defended the morality of Christian life, provided various ethical and philosophical arguments to convince the emperor to abandon the persecution of the Christian Church, and claimed that Socrates and Plato were "unknowing Christians" due to their belief in a logos acting in history. Justin believed that the church grew precisely because it was attacked by pagan officials, and that Christians' martyrdom showed that they deserved to be believed. In 165 AD, he became one of the earliest Christian intellectuals to suffer the ultimate penalty for his faith, being beheaded after refusing to sacrifice to the gods.